Supporting Dementia Care Toolkit



A toolkit to guide and encourage the adoption of digital engagement approaches developed by the Helix Centre as part of the Digital Inclusion Innovation Programme.

An infographic highlighting the various phases required to answer the question: How can digital technologies help to provide community dementia support and reduce loneliness? The phases include discovery phase, co-design phase, pilot phase, evaluation phase, toolkit creation phase
About this project

A London-wide project to co-design and pilot new ways to provide community dementia support.

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About this toolkit

This toolkit was developed to share the methods, approaches and outputs of our digital inclusion project in order to make it easier for community groups and London boroughs to emulate this approach. 

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What does the kit do?

The Digital Befriending Kit aims to augment a standard tablet computer to make it easier for people with little experience of technology to access Zoom video calls and therefore participate in online social activities.

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What is in the kit?

The components of the Digital Befriending Kit.

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Overview of the discovery phase

Our discovery phase took place over four months between September 2021 and January 2022. We worked closely with a number of London boroughs, Voluntary Community Sector (VCS) organisations and health partners throughout this phase.

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Scoping

We introduced London boroughs, VCS organisations and health partners to the project and to scope out the potential opportunities and barriers.

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Synthesis

After our initial scoping workshop, we synthesised our learnings and developed three concepts to share and get feedback about.

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Prototyping

After synthesising our insights from workshop 1 and establishing our three concepts, we ran a prototyping workshop to test each concept with local authorities and community organisations.

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Outputs

The discovery phase highlighted a clear opportunity for us to look at how managed devices might be a tool to help community groups run hybrid or online sessions to connect and support people living with dementia.

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Useful resources

Useful workshop resources and Show & Tell slides.

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Aims & Process

What we hoped to achieve with the project and how we went about it.

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Physical prototypes

We started to develop the physical prototypes – in particular, the Zoom Tickets and tablet stand – so that we could co-design and test them with community groups and make joining a Zoom call as seamless as possible.

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Testing & Feedback

In order to have confidence that the kit would be used successfully by people living with dementia in their own homes, we first tested it with participants at three dementia community groups.

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Outputs

Following the process of testing and iteration, a Digital Befriending Kit with the following features was created.

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Configuring the devices and apps

We simplified the experience of using the devices by configuring the settings.

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Useful resources

Resources used by the Helix Centre team to facilitate the co-design process.

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Outcomes

Six key outcomes (three intermediate and three long-term) came out of our conversations with stakeholders.

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Evaluation plan

In order to determine whether this project achieved the desired outcomes, we had an evaluation plan.

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Overview

We used a pilot online community group to test and learn about the most effective way to run an online community group using the Digital Befriending Kit.

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Evaluation

By analysing the pilot we evaluated the effectiveness of the Digital Befriending Kit in reducing social isolation and digital exclusion for people living with dementia and their carers.

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Recommendations

Recommendations from the pilot phase

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Conclusions

Conclusion and final thoughts from the pilot phase.

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Collaborators


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